Kevin Smith’s entire world is firefighting, from serving as deputy fire chief of the Butler Township Volunteer Fire District or training young firefighters while serving as fire and hazmat program coordinator at Butler County Community College.

Smith began as a firefighter at age 19 in 1989 with the Marshall Township department in Allegheny County.

“I had a friend that did,” Smith said. “I did it just to hang with friends. That got me started.”

What started as a way to spend time with friends lengthened into a lifelong commitment as Smith subsequently joined the Winfield Volunteer Fire Department, then the South Butler Volunteer Fire Department before ultimately finding a longtime home with the Butler Township Volunteer Fire District 3.

Smith’s 34 years of service were recognized when he was named a Hometown Hero by the Butler AM Rotary Club on Sept. 5.

“I was honored,” Smith said. “I basically don't think of myself as a hero. I’m just doing my job.”

Scott Frederick, director of emergency services for Butler Township and Butler Township Volunteer Fire District 3 chief, nominated Smith for the honor.

Frederick said Smith “is probably one of the most dedicated individuals in the service, and he is the biggest example I’ve seen of ‘leaving the place better than when he found it.’”

Smith has served as deputy fire chief at Butler Township VFD since 2022. He served as fire chief until he was succeeded by Fredericks.

Of Smith’s working week, 20 to 25 hours are spent overseeing the department’s operations. There are 40 active members and another 40 to 50 associate members.

“A lot of the deputy fire chief’s position is to look at things for the future and manage the department itself,” Smith said. “I do still run calls and operate on the day-to-day, but my responsibilities are more on the administrative side … making sure the budget’s right for the next year, we have the equipment to do the job, and make sure all the equipment’s still running correctly.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Smith won’t suit up every now and then.

“The calls we get are a mix of fires, accidents, fire alarms. We run some medical calls on occasion. Last year, we had 803 calls,” he said.

“I still go out on calls myself, but not 803 calls.”

Having served as a firefighter for decades, Smith says there isn’t a singular call or fire or incident that stands out to him.

“I'm just there to do the job,” Smith said. “It's nice to help people, but I know that most of it is on their worst days. So it's not something that most people want to see happen.”

While he does get satisfaction from helping people on their bad days, Smith says he also gets an adrenaline rush from firefighting, which is one of the reason’s he’s stayed with it for so long.

“I think most firefighters are in it for, basically, an adrenaline rush,” Smith said. “A lot of it is giving back to the community, but it's like a sport.”

In addition to his duties with the township fire department, Smith has been serving at BC3. There, he oversees the school’s training program for firefighters across the county.

It takes 168 hours of training to become an entry-level firefighter.

He said there are four courses an aspiring firefighter must complete: introduction to fire service, fire ground support, exterior firefighting and interior firefighting. The instruction begins with the basics: how to roll and pack hoses and how to connect to a fire hydrant, to how to fight structure fires from the outside.

More advanced courses train firefighters in interior firefighting.

“That’s where they go into a building and learn to search out a fire and put the fire out,” Smith said. “Then there is hazmat training where the students learn how to find, contain and clean up leaks.”

Smith said 27 counties send 9,000 firefighting students annually to classes either on the BC3 campus or at remote sites.

The college has a dedicated program for fire safety training, which travels to fire departments up and down Western and Central Pennsylvania to provide on-site instruction.

“Any fire departments that want to have training at their station … we coordinate to get them the instructors, and we hire the instructors to go to their stations,” Smith said. “Plus we have open enrollment classes here.”

The biggest challenge departments are facing, according to Smith, is having enough trained personnel that have time to do the job.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer. In some cases people have multiple jobs. Others have lives outside the fire department,” he said.

He does, however, have a sales pitch for people who might be considering becoming a firefighter.

“Firefighting leads you into a lot of structure,” Smith said. “I've met people from every walk of life, gotten to go to lots of different places to train, met a lot of political people just in the means of doing what we have to do to save the community.”